Cuts cause NHS crisis

NHS crisis: under pressure from all angles - end cuts and sell-offs!

Caroline Vincent, Leicester Socialist Party

The NHS is in a perfect storm this winter. Decades of cuts and sell-offs have brought it to breaking point while it faces pressure from all directions.

68 A&E consultants have written to Theresa May. The letter warns of the consequences of chronic underfunding amid a gathering flu epidemic, and the increased strain on already overstretched hospitals with too few staff and beds to cope.

NHS Providers, representing most NHS trusts in England, has demanded an NHS budget increase of £20 billion to avoid catastrophe.

So, what is the Tories' strategy for dealing with the crisis? According to May, the 55,000 operations cancelled this winter were all part of the plan!

Hunt and May both insist, however, that the NHS is better prepared this winter than ever before. Given the images of ambulances queuing outside hospitals, and patients sleeping on the floors of crowded A&E departments, this simply doesn't ring true.

But the current and all-too-visible crisis facing emergency services is just the tip of the iceberg. Staff shortages at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford mean delayed chemotherapy treatment for cancer patients.

Inadequate funding to social care creates further pressure too. Shockingly, under the Tories, the number of elderly people rushed to hospital from care homes has risen 62% since 2010.

Chemists are meant to play a role in reducing pressure on NHS resources. But Lloyds Pharmacy has closed 190 branches, meaning hundreds of job losses and limited access for patients - blaming government cuts.

Absurdly, cuts to NHS services don't even reduce costs in many cases. Quite the opposite.

For instance, lack of beds at the Royal Free and University College hospitals in London have resulted in millions spent on hotel accommodation for patients in specialist care.

At the Royal Free this expenditure has increased tenfold since 2010, rocketing to £400,000 in 2016.

'Out-of-area placements' in mental health too. The additional cost of all this mayhem in the 12 months to October was £83 million.

And the mental health crisis is escalating as demand for services rises while provision shrinks.

Consequently, the Metropolitan Police alone fielded a record 115,000 mental health-related calls in 2016. Calls they are unequipped to deal with, and at a time when they are facing cuts in numbers themselves.

The crisis nurse: "staff are desperate for change" - unions must build for strikes

I work as a crisis nurse and unscheduled care practitioner, with the aim of giving patients a choice - if safe - between hospital admission and home treatment. This choice, unfortunately, is sometimes made for them.

With the shortage of mental health in-patient beds, people are often offered care hundreds of miles away from their homes.

I work in Wales and have known patients placed as far as way as Southampton - a distance of over 200 miles.

This leads to increased stress on mental health workers. We have to arrange transfers, have increased paperwork, offer support and care to distressed and anxious families - and at times very unwell patients.

The NHS needs to value and nurture its staff. Last year 6,479 nurses were off sick for four weeks or more due to stress or mental health problems. The total number of sick days has risen a third between 2012-13 and 2016-17.

This exacerbates staffing shortages in vital areas such as A&E, wards and mental health care. They are all rammed.

Hospitals are struggling to fill hundreds of vacancies - with possibly 100,000 posts unfilled across the NHS, according to Labour analysis.

This is a disgrace. It is a result of years of Tory austerity - and the actions of the Blairite Labour MPs in parliament and AMs in the Welsh Assembly.

Desperate

NHS staff are desperate for change! The government gives us no recognition for the difficult, stressful work we face day in, day out in an understaffed and overstretched service.

The A&E patient: "they were literally overrun" - but mass campaigns can win

Steve Nally, Lambeth Socialist Party

I ended up in London's St Thomas' Hospital after an accident at work on 10 January. From the moment I arrived, the NHS staff, from all walks of life and all nations, treated me with care, consideration and human kindness despite the obvious fact that they were literally overrun with patients and up against it.

People were in every available space and wheelchairs and trolley beds lined the corridors. The A&E department resembled nearby Waterloo station at rush hour, and this in what is one of Britain's top teaching hospitals just across the river from parliament.

In fact, it is in such full-service 'type one' A&Es that waiting times are the worst, with 23% of patients waiting more than four hours to be seen in December.

Even gaining admission to A&E is also at crisis point, with over 5,000 patients stuck in ambulances outside A&Es for more than an hour during the first week of January. Over six weeks, the total queued up in ambulances reached over 90,000.

Doctors are now publicly reporting that people are dying in corridors. I did not see that at St Thomas, thank goodness.

Chaos

But with chaos and overcrowding in A&Es combined with a lack of beds it is inevitable that some patients will spend their last minutes in a hospital corridor. That is degrading and inhuman.

The Tories' and Blairites' cuts and sell-offs are fully responsible for this situation. It is clear the NHS needs more money, resources and staff.

The government has deliberately starved the NHS of what it needs to provoke a debate on privatising it further.

The bosses they represent look fondly at the US, where people's health is big business and where millions have no health cover. That is what the Tories and their friends in big business want for the NHS.